Phoebe England-Baker did not know completing a homework assignment would lead to the Wiki Edu blog spotlighting her work. England-Baker's extensive research expanded information in a Wikipedia article from a short paragraph to an eye-opening report exposing current events at a detention center in Georgia.
England-Baker is a BYU junior majoring in history. Last fall, she took a course on the history of immigration from Professor David-James Gonzales and that is when she learned about the surprising incidents at Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia. She came across a footnote in a class-assigned reading that mentioned incarcerated women were being sterilized in the year 2020. This discovery blew her mind.
The footnote referenced a source that discussed the allegations of non-consensual surgeries occurring on females at this center, including immigrant women. Even with a class discussion exploring the topic, England-Baker felt a need to know more. Because one of the course assignments was to contribute to a Wikipedia article, she used that opportunity to devote more time researching the topic.
Every semester, Gonzales asks his students to write or contribute to a Wikipedia article as an opportunity to work on a historical project that provides immediate public benefit. “I wanted something that students could see have legs in a life outside of the classroom,” he shares. “With the Wikipedia assignment students feel a sense of accomplishment and also see how others interact in their work.” Ever since he discovered the Wiki Education project in 2017, he has been including similar assignments in courses.
England-Baker was compelled to dig deeper into the hidden details of what the female detainees suffered. “I think the biggest highlight was knowing that people would be able to read their stories,” she says, “and knowing that those women now had a voice in a common place.”
England-Baker is Gonzales’ third student to be featured on the Wiki Edu blog. “One Wikipedia assignment, more than 3,500 words, and 36 new references later, and the Irwin County Detention Center Wikipedia article has been completely transformed — thanks to England’s efforts to provide readers with a more comprehensive overview of its history,” reports Colleen McCoy, Wiki Edu blog writer, in the article on England-Baker’s work.
McCoy additionally shares how England-Baker’s Wikipedia article had only one small paragraph about the 2020 allegations when she found it. Now, the article has several sections of new information, including “other allegations made before 2020, a more detailed summary of the 2020 allegations, the legal aftermath of the 2020 allegations, and the 2022 report outlining the United States Senate’s investigation of the center.”
When asked what she took away from this process, England-Baker shared the importance of others’ roles in telling history from all perspectives. “As social scientists and even psychologists and historians, it’s important that we recognize that not everybody's voices are heard.”
She feels that part of her responsibility as an emerging historian is to make space for those that don’t traditionally have a voice in certain fields and explains that her research on the treatment of women in the Irwin County Detention Center is part of recognizing the smaller stories.
“As small as [the story] is, the more of it there is, the bigger impact it will have,” says England-Baker.
Read more about student accomplishments in the College of Family, Home, and Social Scientists here.